Forty Rivers: Landscape and Memory in the District of Ancient Tegea

Forty Rivers

Landscape and Memory in the District of Ancient Tegea

Avhandling til Graden Dr.Art Av Cand.Philol. Jørgen Bakke

Institutt for lingvistiske, litterære og estetiske studier, Universitetet i Bergen.

2007

Cover Illustration: ’The Past from the Window of the Present.’ Photograph (by the Author) of the ruins of the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea seen from the belltower of the village church at Alea.

List of Illustrations iv

List of Maps viii

Preface ix

Introduction 1

Part One: Periegesis, a Time-traveller’s Manual

I TO THE MOUNTAINS 21

II LINEAR AND NON-LINEAR MODELS OF THE PAST 53

III TRAVEL, COMMUNICATION, AND INFRASTRUCTURE 75

Part Two: ’In the Old Days People Lived Together in Villages’:

Traditional Settlement Patterns in the District of Ancient Tegea

IV THE DANCE-FLOOR OF TEGEA 134

V VERTICAL PREHISTORY 204

Part Three: In the Valley of Shadows

VI FROM THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE UNDERWORLD 230

VII THE MUSEUM OF ANCESTORS 260

Part Four: From the Mountains: the Journeys of the Gods

VIII HERMES 292

IX PAN 316

X ARTEMIS 342

Epilogue 367

Bibliography 375

C ^ONTENTS

Figure 1.1 Karst feature in the Sarandapotamos Valley. Photo by the author.

Figure 1.2 Bronze vessel inscribed with the word ΑΛΦΙΟΣ. After Romaios, 1904.

Figure 1.3 Athenian red figure vase with Heracles and the Lernean Hydra.

Figure 1.4 Venetian map of Morea from 1634.

Figure 1.5 Abbè J. J. Barthelemy’s map of Arcadia.

Figure 1.6 Landscape prospect executed by the two heroes of the Greek War of Independence P. Zografou and Y. Makrygiannis illustrating different stages in the struggle for Tripolis up to 1821.

Figure 2.1 Portrait of Tripolitsa compiled for the publication of the Royal French Morea Expedition. After Boblaye, 1836.

Figure 2.2 The ruins of the temple in the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. Photo by the author.

Figure 2.3 Remains of foundations for interior collade in the Archaic temple inside the foundations of the Classical temple in the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. Photo by the author.

Figure 2.4 One of the four in situ stylobate blocks with markings after the interior wooden columns in the cella of the Archaic temple in the sanctuary of Athena Alea. Photo by the author.

Figure 2.5 Reconstruction drawing of the interior of the Classical temple in the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. After Stewart, 1990.

Figure 2.6 State plan of the foundations of the Classical temple in the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. Modified in Adobe Photoshop 7.0, after Dugas et al 1924.

Figure 2.7 Isolated marble block from the Archaic temple of Athena Alea fitted into the conglomerate foundations of the Scopaic temple. Photo by the author.

Figure 2.8 Adjustment of one of the Archaic foundation blocks into the foundations for the wall between the opisthodomus and the cella of the Classical temple.

Photo by the author.

Figure 2.9 Ground plan of the Classical temple in the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. After Dugas et al, 1924.

Figure 3.1 Skala tou Bey kalderimi in the Parthenion Pass between the Plain of Hysiai and the Partheni Basin. Photo by the author.

Figure 3.2 Stepped kalderimi (Skales) near Palea Mouchli. Photo by the author.

Figure 3.3 Eroded wheel-ruts from ancient road in the Parthenion Pass. Photo by the author.

Figure 3.4 Vigla Pass between the Tegean Plain and the Asea Valley. Photo by the author.

Figure 3.5 Reconstructed elevation of Doric temple at Psili Vrisi in the Northern Parnon. After Romaios, 1952.

Figure 3.6 Monumental guttae fragment inserted as a key-stone in the arched gate of one of the village houses at Lithovounia. Photo by the author.

Figure 3.7 Detail of tabula Peutingeriana that shows the Peloponnesian peninsula and the coast of the Southern Greek Mainland.

L ^{IST OF} I LLUSTRATIONS

Figure 4.1 View of Tegean Plain from ancient watchtower at Agia Paraskevi on Mt.

Profitis Ilias. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.2 Remains of ancient watchtower at Agia Paraskevi on Mt. Profitis Ilias. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.3 View over Partheni Basin from ancient watchtower at Agia Paraskevi on Mt.

Profitis Ilias. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.4 The slope of the Neolithic tell near Ayioryitika in the Partheni Basin. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.5 State plan of excavated Neolithic house at tell site near Ayioryitika in Partheni Basin. After Petrakis, 2002.

Figure 4.6 Watercolor by Piet de Jong of female figurine from Neolithic tell site near Ayioryitika in Partheni Basin. After Petrakis, 2002.

Figure 4.7 Animal figurines from Neolithic tel site near Ayioryitika in Partheni Basin.

After Petrakis, 2002.

Figure 4.8 Roger Howell and a local farmer with an ancient warrior monument discovered not far from the village Parthenion. After Howell, 1970.

Figure 4.9 The Panagia church at Palea Episkopi. The medieval building rests on the foundations of the theatre of ancient Tegea. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.10 Modern Marpessa monument at the Tegean village of Agios Sostis. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.11 Remains of Mantinean city wall from early 4th century BC. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.12 Plan of early 4th century city walls at Mantineia.

Figure 4.13 From mosaic floor in the early Christian basilica of Agios Thyrsos in the Tegean agora. From Alexandros, 2000.

Figure 4.14 Ruins of Early Christian basilica in Tegean agora. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.15 The chapel of Agios Ioannis Provatinou. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.16 Early Christian capital from the site of Agios Ioannis Provatinou. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.17 Fragment of interior architectural decoration from the Early Christian sanctuary at the site of Agios Ioannis Provatinou. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.18 An ancient architectural fragment (from door arrangement) on the site of Agios Ioannis Provatinou. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.19 Sherd of an Avaro-Slavic ceramic vessel from Tegea. Found on the surface near the ancient Agora during the recent Norwegian Arcadia Survey. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.20 Fragment of medieval fortifications at Palea Episkopi. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.21 Drawing of the ruins of the Medieval church at Palea Episkopi before resoration work started in the 1880’s.

Figure 4.22 Ancient spolium incerted into a gate in the Castle of Nikli. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.23 Late Ottoman (early 18th century) roadside fountain with dedicatory inscription in Arabic script. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.24 The landscape setting of the Medieval site of Palea Mouchli. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.25 Satellite image of Stadio and neighbouring ikismi showing traditional field pattern around the village. Modified in Adobe Photoshop 7.0, after Google Earth.

Figure 4.26 Gate of old village house in Stadio. An ancient spolium is built into one of the pillars in the gate as a decorative element. Detail of ancient stele to the right. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.27 Ruins of the ’old tower’ at Pirgeïka. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.28 Early modern masonry technique in the ’old tower’ at Pirgeïka. Photo by the author.

Figure 4.29 Road-sign witha Pausanias-citation situated outside Arachova in the Northern Parnon, where Romaios believed that the site of ancient Karyai was. Photo by the author.

Figure 5.1 Village church and old fountain at Vervena. Photo by the author.

Figure 5.2 The Hill of Analipsis. Photo by the author. Photo by the author.

Figure 5.3 Remains of medieval tower on the peek of the Analipsis Hill. Photo by the author.

Figure 5.4 Plan of medieval tower on the peak of the Analipsis Hill. After Romaios, 1957c.

Figure 5.5 Assemblage of Neolithic ground stone tools discovered in the monumental tholos tomb at Analipsis. After Romaios, 1954.

Figure 5.6 Remains of the so-called ’Bouleuterion’ inside the ancient fortifications at Analipsis. Excavation photo from Romaios’ excavation in the 1950’s. After Romaios, 1954.

Figure 5.7 Excavation photo from the 1950’s of remains of ancient fortifications at Analipsis. After Romaios, 1954.

Figure 5.8 The present state of remains of ancient fortifications at Analipsis that were uncovered during Romaios’ excavation in the 1950’s. Photo by the author.

Figure 5.9 Excavation photo from 1950’s of monumental tholos at Analipsis excavated by Romaios. After Romaios, 1954.

Figure 5.10 Plan and profile of monumental tholos at Analipsis excavated by Romaios.

After Romaios, 1954.

Figure 5.11 Drawing of a scene with the birth of Helen. From a red-figure vase found at the ancient settlement at Analipsis. After Karousou, 1985.

Figure 5.12 Red-figure vase found at the ancient settlement at Analipsis. Same as Fig.

5.11. After Karousou, 1985.

Figure 6.1 Plan of the site of the ancient sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. After Østby et al, 1994.

Figure 6.2 Plan of the northern excavation area on the site of the ancient sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea where Erik Østby conducted excavations from 1990- 1994. After Østby et al, 1994.

Figure 6.3 State plan of the Fountain of Auge. After Dugas et al, 1924.

Figure 6.4 Second century AD marble relief from the Villa of Herodes Atticus at Lykou in Kynouria featuring the encounter between Heracles and Auge. After Spyropoulos & Spyropoulos, 2001.

Figure 6.5 Grotto relief from Attica with Pan, Hermes, nymphs and two priests. Photo by the author.

Figure 6.6 Late Geometric handle with a plastic water snake ornament from the Sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. After Voyatzis, 1991.

Figure 6.7 The village church of Agios Nikolaos at Alea (Piali) from 1810 facing the ruins of the temple in the ancient sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. Photo by the author.

Figure 6.8 Apse of the village church of Agios Nikolaos at Alea (Piali) from 1810. Note spolia from ancient buildings in the wall of the church. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.1 View of the Paleokhoro Valley from the south. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.2 Narrow exit from the the Paleokhoro Valley into the Sarandapotamos Gorge between Paleokhoro and the Tegean plain leading into. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.3 View from a cave mouth on the western side of the Paleokhoro Valley.

Photo by the author.

Figure 7.4 False cave mouth on the western side of the Paleokhoro Valley. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.5 View of the Paleokhoro Plateau with one of its two rural chapels. The Tegean Plain in the background. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.6 Miniature tholos at Bronze Age cemetery at Analipsis. After Kalogeropoulos, 1998.

Figure 7.7 Stem of a Mycenean kylix picked up on the river bank in the Paleokhoro Valley. Photo by Vincenco Cracolici.

Figure 7.8 Assemblage of medieval to early modern roof tiles from the Paleokhoro Plateau discovered during the Norwegain Arcadia Survey. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.9 Three complete sets of grindstones from the Paleokhoro Plateau discovered during the Norwegain Arcadia Survey. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.10 Facade of one of the two chapels in the Paleokhoro Plateau. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.11 Medieval spolium in the facade of one of the two chapels in the Paleokhoro Plateau. Photo by the author.

Figure 7.12 Decorated Neolithic figurine shaped like the long axe from Analipsis.

Figure 7.13 Athenian red figure vase with Odysseus and Elpenor in the Underworld.

After Robertson, 1992.

Figure 8.1 Fragment of a red-figure pelike with three herms in conversation.

Figure 8.2 In situ boundary stone in front of north wall of triangular sanctuary in the Athenian Agora. After Camp, 1992.

Figure 8.3 Contemporary ἀρμακάςfrom Kynouria. After Phaklaris, 1990.

Figure 8.4 Portrait of Konstantinos Romaios. After Romaios, 1955.

Figure 8.5 Icon of St. George the Younger of Ioannina. Photo by the author.

Figure 8.6 A contemporary road-side shrine from the District of Ancient Tegea. Photo by the author.

Figure 8.7 Different ’Arcadian Herms’ from Tegea. After Romaios, 1911.

Figure 8.8 Hermes Propylaios by Alkamenes. Roman copy. After Stewart, 1990.

Figure 9.1 Hoplite formation with flute player. Chigi Vase.

Figure 9.2 Arcadian dedication to Pan in the form of a bronze statuette of a shepherd.

After Richter, 1953.

Figure 9.3 Athenian black-figure vase with Pan represented as a standing goat.

Figure 9.4 Marble relief of Pan from Tegea. After Stauridou, 1996.

Figure 9.5 Mountain tortoise on Mt. Parthenion. Photo by the author.

Figure 9.6 Plan of a section of the Pelargikon/Pelasgikon fortifications at the Athenian Acropolis and related monuments. Modified in Adobe Photoshop 7.0, after Travlos, 1971.

Figure 10.1 View over the Tegean Plain from the ancient Artemis Sanctuary at Psili Korphi in the Northern Parnon. Photo by the author.

Figure 10.2 Excavation photo of Romaios’ excavation of a small marble temple at Psili Korphi in the Northern Parnon. After Romaios, 1952.

Figure 10.3 The Swedish archaeologist Fredrik Fahlander holding the banner that was used for an inter-visibility test between Psili Korphi and the Tegean Plain in 2001. Photo by the author.

Figure 10.4 View of Northern Parnon from the Tegean Plain. The site of the ancient sanctuary of Psili Korphi is visible as a faint light yellow dot. The location is indicated with a white circle. Photo by the author modified in Adobe Photoshop 7.0.

Figure 10.5 Fragment of a Late Geometric miniature vessel from Psili Korphi Sanctuary with the depiction of a human figure. After Voyatzis, 1991.

Figure 10.6 Subgeometric miniature vessel from Psili Korphi Sanctuary with snake pattern on handle. After Voyatzis, 1991.

Figure 10.7 Bronze hydrophoros from Tegea from the second half of the 8th century BC.

After Voyatzis, 1991.

Figure 10.8 Drawing of three different triglyphs documented by Romaios at the site of the Psili Korphi Sanctuary. After Romaios, 1952.

Figure 10.9 Marble gorgoneion from Psili Korphi Sanctuary.

Figure 10.10 Marble dog from Psili Korphi Sanctuary. After Romaios, 1952.

Figure 10.11 Bronze figure from Psili Korphi Sanctuary, first half of 8th century BC. After Voyatzis, 1991.

Figure 10.12 Bronze figure from Athena Alea Sanctuary, third quarter of 8th century BC.

After Voyatzis, 1991.

Figure 10.13 Seventh century BC bronze figure from Athena Alea Sanctuary. After Voyatzis, 1991.

Figure 10.14 Goat-headed terracotta figurine from Lykosoura. After Jost, 1985.

Map 1 Map of the Peloponnese with sites mentioned in the text. Produced 2 in Adobe Photoshop 7.0 after Baladié, 1980.

Map 2 Map of the district of ancient Tegea with toponyms mentioned in 24 the text. Produced in Adobe Photoshop 7.0 after 1 : 50 000 maps

from the Greek Military Geographic Service.

Map 3 Map of the Tegean communication network. Produced in Adobe 99 Photoshop 7.0 after 1 : 50 000 maps from the Greek Military

Geographic Service. Contour lines in the terrain model are the same as in Map 2.

Map 4 Map of communication network, sites, and toponyms in the 123 Partheni Basin. Produced in Adobe Photoshop 7.0 after 1 : 50 000

maps from the Greek Military Geographic Service. Contour lines in the terrain model are the same as in Map 2.

Map 5 Map of the urban centre of ancient Tegea. The model of the urban 154 fortifications of Tegea is based on Berard’s suggested reconstruction

in Berard, 1893. The model of the medieval Castle of Nikli is based on GPS-positioning of remaining fragments of medieval fortifications undertaken by Mr. Thomas Risan during NAS. Produced in Adobe Photoshop 7.0 after 1 : 50 000 maps from the Greek Military Geographic Service.

Map 6 Map of archaeological remains at Analipsis. The map is based on a 209 topographical sketch that was made by one of Konstaninos Romaios’

assistants during excavation in the 1950’s that was published by Konstantinos Kalogeropoulos. Produced in Adobe Photoshop 7.0 after 1 : 50 000 maps from the Greek Military Geographic Service, and Kalogeropoulos, 1998.

L ^{IST OF} M ^APS

The first time I visited the district of ancient Tegea was in October 1990 during a student’s course at the recently established Norwegian Institute at Athens. The main target of our excursion to Tegea was a visit to the ancient sanctuary of Athena Alea and the ruins there of a large Classical temple, according to the second century AD commentator Pausanias, built by the famous Scopas of Paros. The previous year the man who was also our guide at Tegea, the Norwegian archaeologist Professor Erik Østby, had initiated an excavation project in the sanctuary. When Prof. Østby asked me a couple of days later if I wanted to take part in the excavation at Tegea, I did not realise that I would make one of the most important decisions for my professional as well as for my personal life when I accepted. Despite the impression that the ancient site made on me back in 1990 I must admit, however, that it was its situation in the landscape of the present that really puzzled my curiosity. Before I came to Tegea I had pictured the typical Ancient Arcadian sanctuary to be something like the sanctuary of Apollo at Bassai, a large Doric temple at a remote location in the Arcadian mountains. There is also a large Doric temple in the sanctuary of Athena Alea, but its place in the landscape of the present could not possibly have been more remote from that of the Bassai sanctuary. The sanctuary of Athena Alea is situated down on a relatively flat mountain plain, a place that has been anything but abandoned by post-ancient history. The foundations of the temple of Athena Alea are situated inside the Tegean village Piali. When the building remains were uncovered in the 19^th century the excavators had to dismantle a good part of the houses of this village, and the ruins of the ancient building now appears as a scar in the village. It is first of all an interest in the historical processes that causes such spectacular interferences between the landscapes of the present and the places, monuments and visual culture of the past

P ^REFACE

that has made me revisit the District of Ancient Tegea many times. This dissertation is the result of these visits.

From 1998 to 2001 I was Research Fellow at the Dept. for Cultural Studies and Art History at the University of Bergen. My most important supporter and patient reader has been my main supervisor Prof. Gunnar Danbolt. I also thank my other supervisor Prof. Tomas Hägg. In the final phase of the project Prof. Richard Holton Pierce has also contributed much with interesting discussions about the history of the Greek landscape, and I am also grateful to him for taking the time to improve my English. The bulk of the four years that I was on a grant from The University of Bergen I spent at the Norwegian Institute at Athens. During the first two years of my stay at Athens the Norwegian Institute provided me with an office, and round the clock access to the Johannes Triandaphyllopoulos Library. I am especially grateful to the friendly and helpful staff of the Norwegian Institute at that time, Audny Hegstad Diamantis and Merete Ludviksen. The final year of my stay at Athens I spent at the Nordic Library at Athens. Its two librarians, Vibeke Espholm Kourtovik and Christina Tsampazi-Reid, have been most helpful. I have also benefited much from discussions with fellow researchers and students at the Nordic Library, especially Jonas Eiring, Petra Pakkanen, Jari Pakkanen, and Jenni Hjohlmann.

During the many years that I have done fieldwork at Tegea there are numerous people in the local communities that have been friendly and helpful. Nikos Reppas has been a great guide, teacher and friend for many years. I also wish to thank the staff at the Tegea Archaeological Museum, and Theodoros Spyropoulos, the former Ephor of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities in Laconia and Arcadia. The scholars and students that have participated in the two Norwegian field-projects at Tegea, The Excavations in the Sanctuary of Athena Alea (1990-1994), and The Norwegian Arcadia Survey (1999-2001), has represented an inspiring forum for me. Erik Østby has been a support and inspiration for many years. I am also very grateful for the long cooperation at Tegea with Knut Ødegård. Chiara Tarditi, who was my field supervisor during the excavation of the sanctuary, learned me most of what I know about excavation techniques. I have also benefited much from discussions with the rest of the research group that took part in the survey at Tegea, Knut Krzywinski, Vincenco Cracolici, Richard Fletcher, Harald Klempe, Maria Pretzler, Thomas Heine

Nielsen, Voytek Nemec, Fredrik Fahlander, Terje Østigård, and Anne Bjune. I also thank our collaborative partners at The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Thomas Risan, and May Liss Bøe Sollund, Odd Stabbetorp at The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, and Aristotelis Koskinas of the Greek Landscape Archaeology Group. They have all contributed with insightful comments to my work. For financial support of the fieldwork at Tegea I thank Alf Tangvald at Hydro Agri Hellas.

After I returned to Norway in 2001, I have worked as a Lecturer in Art History at the University of Bergen. During the difficult period of completing my dissertation parallel with a full time teaching job I have enjoyed the support of goods friend and colleagues at my department. I would especially like to thank Henning Laugerud, Siri Meyer, and Sigrid Lien for their support. Last, but not least, I thank my wife Hege A. Bakke-Alisøy. I thank her for the professional contribution to the Norwegian Arcadia Survey, for her patience, good advice, her will to pass on to me her knowledge of Aegean Prehistory, and for being a great travel companion.

Bergen, 7. December, 2007.

Although there are many references in early Greek literature to the Tegeans and their land, Pausanias’ travel guide from the second century AD gives us the first detailed account of the cultural geography of Tegea.¹ Without ever having visited the place it is fairly easy to find one’s way in the landscape of ancient Tegea just from reading Pausanias’ description of it. If one actually goes to Tegea, however, the matter becomes a lot more complicated, and it is at times difficult to make any connection at all between Pausanias’ text and the Tegean landscape. The most common way to deal with this kind of discrepancy between text and landscape in 19^th and 20^th century historical discourse has been to blame the author. Since the German philologist Herman von Willamowitz Moellendorff branded Pausanias as completely unreliable after he had made a fool of himself in front of a group of German nobility that he guided through Greece using Pausanias as his main source, this positivist fallacy has tended to strike Pausanias.² Because many of the places and monuments that he described were long since deserted and derelict already in his own time, we would perhaps have been just as disappointed as Willamowitz if we could time-travel back to Tegea in the second century AD. What Pausanias based his descriptions on – local tradition, literary references, or simply by making them up – is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to reconstruct. What is possible to reconstruct, however, is his rhetorical ability to visualise distant times and places. This rhetoric of distant times and places is the raison d’être of this dissertation, and in that sense Pausanias is both an important source and a methodological paradigm.

According to Pausanias the territory of ancient Tegea was in Southeastern Arcadia in the interior mountain district of the Peloponnesian Peninsula (Map 1).

1 On Pausanias as a source for early Greek history compared with other major sources see Hejnic, 1961.

2 For a more detailed account of this incident as well as its consequences for 20^th century reception of Pausanias as an historical source see Ackerman, 1987.

The cultural and economic centre in this ancient landscape was an urban settlement on a fertile mountain plain that the Tegeans shared, and often struggled over, with their fellow Arcadians, the Mantineans. Pausanias also has it that Tegean territory extended beyond the plain and into the surrounding mountains.³ Since the Roman Emperor probably had restricted the territorial influence of the Tegeans after they supported Marc Anthony at Actium, Pausanias is here recalling a past geography. In this geography of the past Mt. Parthenion in the east was the Tegean border at Argive territory, and in the southern Mt. Parnon was the Spartan frontier. Many times during its early history Sparta had tried to occupy the rich agricultural territory of the Tegean Plain. The Greek historian Herodotus recounts in some detail the heroic resistance of the Tegeans against Sparta in the sixth century BC. Before one campaign the Spartans sent an embassey to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi to inquire about their opportunities in Arcadia. The oracle replied that the Spartans would meet heavy resistance in Arcadia, but that they could have “the dance-floor of Tegea,” and she continued; “you can caper there, and measure out her beautiful plain with a rope.”⁴ This reply made the Spartans so confident of victory that they dragged iron fetters all the way over Mt.

Parnon “because they expected to reduce the people of Tegea to slavery.”⁵ The arrogant Spartans lost the battle, and some of them were taken prisoners and forced to work as land measurerers on “the dance-floor of Tegea … measuring out her beautiful plain with a rope” as the oracle ironically had predicted. In Tegean captivity they were forced to wear the very chains that they had brought with them all the way from Sparta.

When Pausanias visited the district of ancient Tegea probably more than 700 years after the Spartans had suffered their humiliating defeat, he was entering a landscape of ghosts. It is something that has always irritated political and economic historians who read Pausanias that he can spend page after page summarising local variations of mythological events while he spends little space on recent Roman monuments, political

3 In the case of Argos Pausanias is very specific in locating the border at Hysiai, a location on the slope on the Argive side of the mountain pass in Mt. Parthenion. See Pausanias, 8.54.7. The Spartan border Pausanias situates at a place called Hermai, which was a common sanctuary of Hermes, where the borders between Argos, Sparta and Tegea met. See Pausanias 2.38.7.

4 Herodotus, 1.66.

5 ib. id.

and religious instutions, and social and economic conditions in the places that he visits.⁶ His account of the territorial extent of the Greek city-states reflects a past geography when they were independent and powerful before the introduction of Roman rule. In Pausanias’ account of the district of ancient Tegea he says absolutely nothing about current economic activity and settlement structure, but he does take care to report in detail the state of the rusty old remains of the Spartan iron fetters that, according to him, were still hanging in the old Tegean sanctuary of Athena Alea.⁷

RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL ACITIVITY AT TEGEA

Although the Spartan fetters have yet to be recovered from its ruins, it is first and foremost the extensive architectural remains of the ancient Tegean sanctuary of Athena Alea that has attracted both scholarly and popular attention at Tegea during the past 200 years. According to Pausanias, Scopas from Paros was the architect of a Classical temple in this sanctuary.⁸ It has been assumed that this Scopas was the same as the man who is elsewhere known as one of the major late Classical Greek sculptors.⁹ This information was, no doubt, one of the main reasons why early Western travellers took an interest in Tegea and why regular archaeological excavations at Tegea started already in the late 19^th century. Another reason why Tegea came to play a role in modern archaeological exploration of Greece is that both Pausanias and other ancient sources indicate that a city wall encircled the urban centre of ancient Tegea.¹⁰ Although the main research issues and methodology have changed since the modern archaeological exploration of ancient Tegea started at the end of the 19^th century, these two monuments (the city wall and the Classical temple of Athena Alea) also define the two most recent archaeological field projects at Tegea. The Norwegian Excavations in

6 As is pointed out by Helene Whittaker the idea about Pausanias’ silence on Roman monuments and institutions should be modified. In such cases as the theatre at Epidauros (Pausanias, 2.27.5) Pausanias does, in fact, praise the Romans for their ingenuity in theatre building, but such cases are rare. See also Whittaker, 1992.

7 Pausanias, 8.47.2.

8 Pausanias, 8.45.5.

9 For a discussion of the works of Scopas see Stewart, 1977.

10 Pausanias does not actually describe the wall, but he mentions gates in the wall. See for instance Pausanias, 8.53.4; and Xenophon, Hellenika, 6.5.9

the sanctuary of Athena Alea, conducted by the Norwegian archaeologist Erik Østby, took place from 1990 to 1994, and was the first field project in the area under the auspieces of the Norwegian Institute at Athens. During this excavation, where I participated as a student, I spent a lot of time talking to the Norwegian archaeologist Knut Ødegård who was one of the field supervisors. We soon found that we had a shared interest in landscape studies. Since at that time I was contemplating writing a doctorate in Greek landscape studies and was looking for a case study, I joined Ødegård in the preparation of what was to become the second Norwegian field project at Tegea.

The Norwegian Arcadia Survey (henceforth NAS) was conducted by Ødegård and the Norwegian Botanist Knut Krzywinski. Field-work took place from 1999 to 2001. The project took the late 19^th century definition of the perimeter of the ancient urban centre of Tegea as its starting point. Rather than simply aiming to define the extent of the ancient urban centre and identify the remains of the city wall, however, the purpose of The Norwegian Arcadia Survey (NAS) was to offer a broader spectrum of disciplinary approaches to the long-term history of the district of ancient Tegea. It became clear already when we had our first preliminary field-season in the form of a workshop at Tegea in July 1997 that the focus of the project would be geographical rather than historical. The disciplinary fields that participated in NAS included archaeology, history, art history, geography, geology, and botany.¹¹ My own involvement with the field-work was mainly connected with the archaeological group since I supervised one of the archaeolgical field teams. During the preliminary seasons in 1997 and 1998, however, I also participated in drilling core samples for pollen analysis, collecting reference material for the botanical survey, obtaining georadar profiles, and setting up the digital geographical database that would be used for documentation. Since the project also included students from different disciplines we tried to maintain this inter-disciplinary practice during the field-seasons from 1999 to 2001 by allowing students to circulate between the disciplinary field teams. Even though it is impossible for all archaeologists to become geologists during a couple of

11 The disciplinary fields that participated in NAS certainly had their chronological preferences. The archaeological survey was focused on an intensive investigation of the relationship between the urban centre and the countryside in antiquity, whereas the geological team was focused on hydrology and sedimentation processes during the last cool interval of the glacial period (130.000 to 20.000 years ago).

weeks of fieldwork, we wanted all participants to have some experience with the research issues and methodologies of the disciplines involved in the project. Members of the research group of NAS were mainly expected to contribute to the project with research formulated from the viewpoint of their distinctive disciplines, and the project should accordingly be termed multi-disciplinary rather than inter-disciplinary. It was, however, the explicit ambition of the research group that working together in the field as well as in workshops and seminars before and after the fieldwork would encourage groups of, and individual, researchers to bridge disciplines.

When I first became involved with the research group of NAS in 1997, my main contribution to the project was supposed to be a study of local tradition connected with historical places and monuments in the district of ancient Tegea. The dissertation that is presented here is the result of these studies. In 1997 my main interest was in how the veneration of the local past at Tegea was expressed in architectural monuments, visual culture and literary representations from different historical periods ranging from antiquity to the early modern period. At the outset I planned that my dissertation should consist of a chronologically ordered sequence of historical tableaux of the local past. My choice of material (monuments and literature) for this study was decided on the basis of my educational background in art history and ancient Greek language and literature. Equipped with the theoretical apparatus of post-modern historical relativism I imagined that neatly distinctive landscapes of memory would emerge from the reading of literary descriptions from antiquity, the medieval and early modern periods. The main reason why my dissertation has turned out slightly different from the historical constructionist project I embarked on is my encounter with the geographical and ecological approaches that developed as the shared platform for the NAS research group.¹²

12 Although from time to time there will occur references to material obtained during the field campaign of NAS from, 1999 to 2001 and to preliminary analysis undertaken during serveral workshops from 2003 to 2006, there has been no attempt to address the primary results of NAS in this dissertation. Presently the NAS research group is working with the publication of results from the project, which will appear as a monograph in the international publication series of the Norwegian Institute at Athens with Knut Ødegård and myself as co-editors. See Bakke & Ødegård, forthcoming.

THE REGIONAL TURN IN MEDITERRANEAN LANDSCAPE STUDIES

Ever since the publication in 1949 of Fernand Braudel’s geohistorical study of the Mediterranean region in the Age of the Spanish king Philip II the Mediterranean region has been a reference case in discussions about the relationship between geography and history. Together with his predecessor Lucien Febvre Braudel represented a new trend in geographical thinking in the 20^th century often referred to as New Geography.¹³ An important theoretical contribution from the French geohistorians was that they shifted the geographical focus from nations consisting of connections between land and people to landscapes understood as connections between the natural environment and human culture. Braudel’s aim was that geohistory should represent an alternative to the dominating political historical discourse. Although geohistory has not perhaps been the dominant paradigm in post-war historical discourse, Braudel’s line of thinking was no doubt very influential in the kind of landscape archaeology that developed through numerous archaeological survey projects in Greece since the 1960’s. More recently this research has also promted a regional focus in Mediterranean landscape history.¹⁴ Regional landscape studies in the Mediterranean area have a long history. The extensive travel literature on Greece, both the ancient paradigms such as Pausanias as well as 19^th century Western European travellers, can be regarded as part of a regionalistic tradition. Some of the learned travellers from the 19^th century like William Loring also used methods, however immature from a retrospective viewpoint, that are very similar to the methodology of current archaeological surveys.

The first methodically consistent archaeological surveys in the Mediterranean region were undertaken in Italy rather than in Greece, but it is the University of Minnesota Messenia Expedition (henceforth UMME) in the Southwestern Peloponnese that has become the main early reference project for other regional survey projects in Greece.¹⁵ The project started out as a small-scale investigation of the locality of Bronze Age Pylos in the mid 1950’s. Under the influence of the so-called American New Archaeology in the 1960’s UMME developed into an interdisciplinary landscape survey that involved cooperation between archaeologists and ecological scientists. Like Lewis

13 See Braudel, 1992; and Febvre, 1922.

14 See Horden & Purcell, 2000.

15 For the publication of this project see McDonald & Rapp, 1972.

Binford, who was one of the most eager propagators of New Archaeology in the 1960’s, participants in the UMME became more and more concerned with the ecological aspects of the historical landscape they investigated.¹⁶ Renfrew and Wagstaff’s study of the island of Melos from 1982 was especially influential in adopting the holistic ecology of the so-called New Archaeology movement.¹⁷ In addition to the ecological perspective Renfrew and Wagstaff attempted to make the Melos project an ‘archaeology of everything’ in which Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue was taken into account in the same archaeological mode of interpretation as were surface scatters of pottery fragments.

Although this ecologically minded ‘archaeology of everything’ was never formulated as its explicit theoretical approach it also influenced the multi-disiplinary approach of the Norwegian Arcadia Survey.

The ecological paradigm in regional landscape survey projects in Greece is indebted to Braudel’s understanding of landscape as a dynamic force in human history. Whereas Braudel tended to focus on the slowly unfolding processes in large geographical areas, (‘the Mediterranean’) recent landscape surveys in Greece have been more focused on regional issues.¹⁸ In The Corrupting Sea. A Study of Mediterranean History from 2000 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell adopted a pronounced regional focus. Although they recognise Braudel’s achievement in integrating geography and history, they reject Braudel’s concept of total history.¹⁹ Both landscape historians who have adopted Braudel’s geohistorical approach and landscape archaeologists in the Mediterranean survey tradition that goes back to UMME are mainly interested in the spatial analysis of

16 Binford first outlined the aims of New Archaeology in Binford, 1962. See also Trigger, 1989, 294ff; and Hodder, 1986, 1.

17 See Renfrew & Wagstaff, 1982.

18 The regional focus was already very much present in UMME. Regional surveys in Greece have become so numerous during the past 10-15 years that I only mention a few influential examples here. In addition to UMME and the Melos project there are especially two regional surveys that have become major reference projects. Between 1978 and 1991 John Bintliff and Anthony Snodgrass directed a regional survey of Boeotia in Central Greece. See Bintliff & Snodgrass, 1988. Another important multi-disciplinary survey project in Greece grew out of a series of field-projects in the Southern Argolid conducted by H. M.

Jameson in the 1950’s. Like many other regional survey projects the Argolis Survey was published in a series of monographs and articles aimed at the specialist audience. See for instance Runnels et al, 1995.

One of the few introductions to Greek survey archaeology, published by three of the central participants in the Argolis Survey, A Greek countryside: the southern Argolid from prehistory to the present day, has also been most influential in the dissemination of the idea of regional historical ecology in Greece. See Jameson, Runnels, & van Andel, 1994.

19 See Horden & Purcell, 2000, 39.

physical remains and economic conditions. Horden and Purcell also have a keen interest in cultural history, and especially in the spiritual landscape. As an alternative to Braudel’s geographical determinism and reductionist total history Horden and Purcell propose an ecological viewpoint more in the line of what K. S. Zimmerer has termed New Ecology.²⁰ Historical ecology, Hoden and Purcell agree, “concerns itself with instability, disequilibria and chaotic fluctuations.”²¹ With this dynamic concept of historical ecology Horden and Purcell propose to approach Mediterranean history as a complex web of micro-ecologies that emphasise unpredictable historical scenarioes, extra-ecological factors such as the spiritual landscape, and local variations. However new and dynamic the concept of ecology may be in New Ecology, Horden and Purcell emphasize that the historical approach to ecology should be mindful not to subordinate itself to yet another paradigm from the natural sciences as was the case with New Archaeology. Their insistence on the primacy of cultural dynamics in historical discourse can also stand as a motto for my own approach to geography and ecology:

… the historical ecology of the Mediterranean cannot, in the end, however ‘new’ it becomes, stand as a scientific pursuit. The dynamic and flux of social allegiances and ordered behaviour in the Mediterranean region will defy scientific modelling.

Historical ecology, as opposed to other kinds, will therefore investigate these processes in a different spirit. The study of them may clearly be enhanced by frequent invocation of the natural ecologist’s terms, procedures and self- reinventions. But without sustained attention to what is distinctively historical about the place of humanity within the environment, and particularly to the complexity of human interaction across large distances, the study of the Mediterranean past will ultimately not have advanced very far beyond Plato’s simile of frogs round a pond.²²

If the follwing study has advanced a little beyond the pond, it is first of all because I have sometimes allowed myself to drift into the Tegean woods, wetlands and mountains that from a diciplinary viewpoint ‘belong’ to the ecological sciences. Many of the strolls in this landscape, such as the discussions on geology and other ecological subjects in chapter one, started out as discussions with geologists and other ecologists who have participated in the multi-disciplinary collaboration of NAS. Hopefully my continuous cross-examination of the NAS ecologists, combined with reading up on

20 Zimmerer, 1994.

21 Horden & Purcell, 2000, 49.

22 Horden & Purcell, 2000, 49.

ecological subjects, has reduced the number of errors in my text. It is, however, impossible not to take a wrong turn every once in a while in unfamiliar territory. My contribution to the discussion about the historical ecology of the Tegean Plain is, and remains, the contribution of a cultural historian. My viewpoint is that of a cultural historian looking at the landscape. This perspective is distorted by the cultural memory deposited in literary representations and in landscape as visual culture.

LANDSCAPE AND VISUAL CULTURE

To view cultural memory as a landscape of images is a traditional notion. Classical works in cultural memory studies such as Simon Shama’s Landscape and Memory from 1995 are often attentive to the phenomenon that cultural memory is expressed in the form of images, be they concrete images such as monuments, works of art, popular visual culture, abstract images in the form of literary visualisations, religious visions, or personal memory images.²³ What has escaped Shama, as well as many other cultural memory students, is that the idea about a connection between visual culture, landscape, and memory is deeply rooted in the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition. All ancient commentators agree that images (imagines) and places (loci) make up the basic building blocks of the kind of technical memory (ars memoriae) that the rhetorical student must cultivate if he wants to learn his arguments by heart.²⁴ Quintilian explains that the mnemotechnical devices (imagines et loci) that the rhetor uses to prepare his performance are merely imitations of natural, spontaneous memory. The mnemotechnical power of place, argues Quintilian, is so persistent that when we revisit a location we can even remember what we were thinking about when we visited this place sometime in the past.²⁵ Apart from this rare philosophical aphorism in Quintilian most ancient rhetorical literature about ars memoriae is very technical. In Aristotle’s conceptual taxonomy memoria signifies the technical side of memory that the

23 Shama, 1995.

24 The classic study of the cultural history of ars memoriae is Frances Yates study from 1966. See Yates, 1966. See also Oexle, 1995.

25 See Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 11.2.17.

rhetorical handbooks deal with.²⁶ Aristotle also talks about another form of memory, reminiscentia that represents what Frances Yates calls “a deliberate effort to find one’s way among the contents of memory.”²⁷ The Aristotelian concept of reminiscentia implies a kind of cultural theory that the German cultural historian Gerhard Oexle has termed

‘memory culture’ (Memoria als Kultur).²⁸ One way to regard the bases for this rhetorical understanding of reminiscentia, recollection, is that it is based on the same structure as technical memory (memoria), that its building blocks are images and places, or landscapes as I have preferred. Because the topic for this dissertation falls under the Aristotelian category of reminiscentia, its subtitle should perhaps rather have been

‘Landscape and Recollection in the district of ancient Tegea.’ When I have made the heretical choice to use memory it is connected with current terminology in social memory studies. This applies to the cultural historical tradition represented by Simon Schama’s famous Landscape and Memory from 1995, and it is also the case with recent archaeological discussions about landscape, monuments and sacred places.²⁹

There are especially three areas in Mediterranean cultural history where the relationship between landscape and cultural memory has been a major topic during the past 15 to 20 years. One is the ideological critique of 19^th and 20^th century classical archaeology raised by scholars such as Michael Shanks.³⁰ In this context cultural memory is usually defined as politically motivated attempts to redefine history. This kind of cultural memory study is often closely related to historiography, and in most European contexts this critical approach to cultural memory is often associated with ideological critique of the cultural foundation of the modern nation state.³¹ Historiography does play a part in the following discussion, but there is no emphasis on

26 This is, for instance, his view in the Topics: “… memory of things themselves is immediately caused by the mere mention of their places.” See Aristotle, Topica, 163b24-27.

27 Yates, 1966, 34. Aristoteles’ distinction between memoria and reminiscentia is based on his theory of knowledge, where the visual plays an important part in the imaginative faculty, for “the soul never thinks without an image.” Aristotle, De Anima, 432a17. His theory of memory and recollection is found in De memoria et reminiscentia. See also Yates, 1966, 31ff.

28 See Oexle, 1995.

29 For two influential works from the 1990’s that discuss the prehistoric relationship between landscapes, monuments, and memory see Tilley, 1994; and Edmonds, 1999.

30 See Shanks, 1996.

31 Martin Bernal’s Black Athena, which aimed at rehabilitating the Afroasiatic roots of Classical Greek culture, is perhaps one of the most pronounced recent attacks on the Western European memory of Ancient Greece as its cultural origin. Bernal approached these issues in the first volume of Black Athena.

See Bernal, 1987. For a selection of critical discussions of Bernal’s thesis see Lefkowitz & Rogers, 1996.

classical ideology critique in my approach to cultural memory in the district of ancient Tegea. Another area of great interest in this connection is the renewed focus on active interest in the Greek past during the period of the Roman Empire known as the Second Sophistic. Scholars such as Jas Elsner and Susan Alcock have contributed interesting studies of the role of visual culture and landscape in this period.³² A third tradition in Mediterranean archaeology that is also of great interest here is the study of local cultural memory expressed in sanctuaries and ancestral places. One of the most interesting contributions to this debate during the past generation is the French historian François de Polignac’s La Naissance de la cité grecque from 1984. Contrary to the traditional political model of the development of the early Greek city-state (polis), de Polignac claimed that early sanctuaries situated in the extra-urban landscape represented the main cultural engine of the polis. Especially since de Polignac’s study was translated into English in 1995 the relationship between the polis and its memorial landscape has become a key topic in ancient Greek cultural history.³³ Another school of thought concerned with the relationship between civic and commemorative space in ancient Greece has been more directly concerned with the veneration of ancestral places. De Polignac also emphasises the role of the kind of ancestors who were called heroes in ancient Greece.³⁴ Another structurally less spectacular, but in our context very interesting, type of ancestral veneration can be found in burial contexts. Reuse of earlier graves, as well as other forms of secondary intrusion in funerary contexts, even looting, is also an important source material for the reconstruction of the local landscape of memory.³⁵

Different kinds of chthonic landscapes, be they hero shrines, local saints, sacred springs, monsterous creatures that personify natural phenomena, or even cemeteries are especially interesting because they often combine specific topographical locations

32 See for instance Alcock, 1993, Elsner, 1995; Alcock, 2002; Cherry & Elsner, 2003, and Alcock & van Dyke, 2003.

33 One example that testifies to de Polignac’s influence is an anthology edited by Robin Osborne and Susan Alcock in which both de Polignac and other researchers who work with Greek sanctuaries were invited to make contributions to the ongoing discussions prompted by de Polignac’s study. See Alcock &

Osborne, 1996.

34 See de Polignac, 1995, 128-149. An interesting local example of hero cult at Tegea is connected with Orestes. See Boedeker, 1993, and MacCanley, 1999. For further discussions hero cult see articles in Hägg, 1999.

35 See Antonaccio, 1995.

(loci) with a particular form of visual culture phenomena, ghosts. As the visual culture theoretician Nicholas Mirzoeff has pointed out, ghosts are, even though we cannot exactly see them, very much visual.³⁶ From this perspective visual culture discourse can, as Mirzoeff suggests, bridge the gap between speculative metaphysics and scientific study, because spirits and ghosts are also material in so far as they are understood as visual, which is, of course, not exactly the same as being visible. In this context of the introduction it is also tempting to suggest that there is a very pronounced tendency in Greek culture to recognise the visual character of spiritual phenomena. This was certainly the case in ancient Greek culture with its broad range of visual arts applied in the representation of gods, chthonic creatures, heroes and men.

From the traditional account of the ancient Greek view of afterlife, visualised in Odysseus’ journey to the Underworld, we also have a vivid description of this visual character. Beyond the waters of the Styx even the great heroes of the Trojan campaign are reduced to mere spectral resemblances of their bodies.³⁷ Since we will also approach examples from the post-ancient, Byzantine and Ottoman periods, it is also relevant to point out here that Byzantine and Greek Orthodox Christianity assign a special value to spiritual visualisations, icons.³⁸ The kinds of image that I will approach in the following are of both types. There are a few examples of genuine local visual culture from the district of ancient Tegea, and they certainly play a part in the discussion. Monuments are, of course also visual phenomena, and there are also visible examples of monuments from different historical periods at Tegea. Equally important in our connection are the many invisible ghosts that occupy her memorial landscape. Many of those ghosts are no more than rhetorical shadows that appear from the reading of historical texts.

36 See Mirzoeff, 2002.

37 When Odysseus visits the underworld, the spirits of the dead approach in the form of images.

Especially revealing is his encounter with one of his crew-members, Elpenor. See Odyssey, 11.62-78. For a general discussion of the topic of encounters between the dead and the living in the ancient world see Ogden, 2001. On the Elpenor-incident see especially Johnston, 1999, 3-35.

38 In the context of the Norwegian Arcadia Survey two other members of the NAS research group have been working with the Tegean spiritual landscape. They address the phenomenological study of funerial sites: Tegea is one case study by the Swedish archaeologist Fredrik Falander, and Hege Agathe Bakke- Alisøy’s study of current local tradition another. See Fahlander, 2003; and Bakke-Alisøy, forthcoming.

EKPHRASTIC LITERATURE AND DOCUMENTED MONUMENTS

This dissertation will address literary and archaeological sources from the Late Neolithic to the early modern Period within the local historical frame of the district of ancient Tegea. The main focus in discussions of literary sources is on the rhetoric of visualising the past, or, to paraphrase Mirzoeff, on the rhetoric of ghosts. As I have already commented this interest has also taken me in the direction of historiography, but the main type of literary rhetoric I have focused on is best exemplified by Pausanias. His travel description of the southern Greek mainland and the Peloponnese was written in the second century AD. It is in many respects a typically eclectic work of the Second Sophistic, and combines elements from the geographical tradition from Homer, Herodotus and Strabo with a very particular form of rhetorical ekphrasis.³⁹ In the ancient rhetorical education ekphrasis was a general form of visualisation exercise, and it could be directed towards the rhetorical visualisation of a spectacular event such as an armed conflict, the description of a place, or a work of art. Rhetorical visualisations of great works of art from distant times and places can be found in the earliest Greek literature. The description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad held its position as paradeigma for the ekphrasis of works of art throughout antiquity, and ekphrastic topoi from this text have been recycled during practically every classisist movement in European cultural history.⁴⁰ Pausanias was certainly not the first ancient geographer to weave ekphrasis of works of art into geographical discourse, but he cultivated a rhetoric in which the narrative structure is made up of the geographical distribution (loci) of works of art (imagines). This gives his work the character of an intertextual game with the structural devices of ars memoriae. In Aristotelian terms Pausanias’ text can be read as a paradigm for the rhetoric of recollection, and his text is one of the most important suppliers of ghosts to the Tegean memorial landscape.

39 For a comprehensive discussion of Pausanias in the context of ancient travel writing see Pretzler, 2007.

On the Second Sophistic see Anderson, 1993.

40 For an overview of ekphrasis of works of art in ancient literature, as well as an interesting discussion of the special case of this rhetorical phenomenon in Byzantine sermons, see Hägg, 1989. In Imperial

literature this form of literary visualisation of works of art developed into a specialised genre,

Philostratus’ Imagines being the only example that has been preserved for posterity. For an interesting viewpoint of the imaginary character of Philostratus, Imagines, see Bryson, 1994.

Memory, or reminiscence in the Aristotelian sense, is a literary and rhetorical subject, and many of the examples which I will take up have specific literary topoi as their starting point. My aim with this project, however, has been to apply the rhetorical theory of memoria/reminiscentia in the discussion of concrete landscapes, monuments and local visual culture in the district of ancient Tegea. This approach has also directed my attention to previous archaeological activity at Tegea and towards the kind of ghosts that are awakened by people who excavate long since abandoned tombs and sanctuaries. Already in the early 19^th century there was sporadic archaeological activity in the area. Some of the first learned Western travellers such as the British Colonel W.

M. Leake visited Tegea two decades before the Greek War of Independence.⁴¹ During the war the French king sent a scientific expedition to the Peloponnese to accompany the French forces that came to the assistance of the Greek Liberation Army. The expedition visted Tegea, and made interesting observations there about the landscape and its ancient monuments.⁴² Neither Leake nor the French expedition made any attempt to excavate the monuments that they observed. The first regular archaeological exploration in the area was undertaken a few years after that war by the German archaeologist Ludwig Ross, who at that time had been appointed head of the Greek archaeological service set up by the new king of Greece.⁴³ Around the turn of the century French archaeologists were engaged both in the exploration of the urban site of ancient Tegea, and in conducting an excavation of the remains of the sanctuary of Athena Alea. Another interesting personage in our connection is the Greek archaeologist Konstantinos Romaios, who was born and raised in a mountain village in the district of ancient Tegea. Romaios made several investigations in the area that span a period of more than fifty years. He was no doubt a man with a most intimate knowledge of the past and present cultural landscape in the district of ancient Tegea, and his work is an unvaluable source in the exploration of Tegean landscapes of

41 See Leake, 1830.

42 In the tradition of the French Scientific Encyclopaedia the The French Royal Scientific Expedition in the Morea was published in a monograph series, in which each monograph covered the observations of a specific scientific discipline. Of most immediate interest for the discussion of the cultural landscape and historical ecology is Boblaye, 1836 (on the geographical distribution of historical monuments), and Boblaye & Virlet, 1833 (on geology).

43 See Ross, 1841.